Extracting information from repertory grid data: New perspectives on clinical and assessment practice

The repertory grid technique devised by Kelly (1955/1991) can be useful in clinical practice and re- search, because it provides significant information in terms of the respondents’ mental structure. How- ever, it is a complex technique calling for a substantial investment of time and effort by both clinician and respondent if the information obtained is to be relevant and useful. Its main advantage is that it al- lows the patient’s personally relevant data to be subjected to the rigor of the mathematical-statistical elaboration of underlying structures in the data provided by computer analysis. The present article shows how this can be undertaken using a grid completed by a woman with an eating disorder. Addi- tionally, the paper provides a historical context for grid analyses carried out with a freeware computer program available in English and Italian that incorporates recently developed methods of grid analysis.